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I've Got Piece Like an iRiver

This article by Matija Suklje initially appeared in TUX Magazine, issue 7.

There are a whole lot of MP3 players out there. Few will also play Ogg Vorbis files. The iRiver devices are among the few. Virtually all, of course, "talk" to your Windoze system. But, we are about Linux. In this article, Matija explains how to get your iRiver device talking to your Linux system.

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Several of the iRiver devices are supported under Rockbox, an open source mp3 player project. This project opens these devices to support many more formats. In addition you can get native USB hard drive copies using a file manager rather than some other tool.

In the latest version (available in Edgy Eft or Dapper backports), amaroK now supports the iRiver device natively via the ifp protocol. My wife has an iRiver and has suffered using awkware interfaces up to this point. amaroK is the first program she used to manage her iRiver that made her smile.

iAudio (or Cowon what ever you want to call it) makes good mp3, ogg, flac, ... players for linux users. Though there is a small problem (as far as what I have heard) like for example with the G3 model. That is the problem of upgrading your firmware which can only be done with a windows application. Considering how iAudio is kind of famous about providing nice new features in their firmware updates it would be a great loss if updating ones music player would not be possible. Then in the ohter hand many of us probably have access to a windows machine every once in a while ...if we wanted to. So this might not be a huge problem. Then again if it is, I can tell you that atleast iAudio A2 PMP doesn't require any software for updating (the updating software is in the machine and once you've provided it with the update it will execute the update process the next time you turn the thing on).

Anyways I'm a happy/proud iAudio A2 owner and more specifically I'm happy/proud about my players: 1. linux compatibilty 2. ability to play so many video and audio formats (most notably FLAC!!) 3. the awsome sound quality it provides (though to fully experience that you do need better earplugs than the ones that come with the player).